Strengthen Your Adductors in Bridge Pose

Do you knees splay out to the edges in Bridge Pose (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana)? That is one thing I’ve noticed loads, each in myself within the earlier years of apply, and in lots of yoga college students. Is it an issue? Over time, I’m guessing it might be, specifically, on your knees and sacroiliac (SI) joint. There are a number of methods to treatment it. The one I’ll focus on right this moment entails putting a Yoga Block between your knees in Bridge Pose to strengthen your adductors.

What Are the Adductors?

The adductors are the muscle groups of the internal thighs. They embrace:

• Pectineus
• Adductor longus
• Adductor brevis
• Gracilis
• Adductor magnus (the biggest muscle within the group)

The adductors draw the leg towards the middle line (adduction) and internally rotate the thigh on the hip joint. This muscle group stabilizes the pelvis, serving to to steadiness the pelvic place throughout strolling. Additionally they assist “explosive” actions, equivalent to leaping and operating. Whether or not we all know it or not, the adductors assist almost all our day by day actions.

After we spend quite a lot of time sitting, each the adductors and abductors (outer thigh and hip muscle groups that transfer the leg away from the middle line) can weaken. Over time, this will destabilize the knees, resulting in knee ache and dysfunction. In my very own casual “research” of adductor energy and weak spot, I’ve discovered that strengthening the abductors has helped maintain my SI joint extra steady.

How Can You Strengthen Your Adductors in Yoga Observe?

How are you going to inform in case your adductors are weak? Do this easy inquiry: together with your toes a bit of wider than hips-width aside and parallel, bend your knees about 90 levels right into a standing squat. Do your knees need to splay out to the edges? If that’s the case, your adductors aren’t pulling their weight. Nevertheless, even when your thighs simply keep parallel, it’s nonetheless a good suggestion to strengthen your adductors, particularly should you sit loads in the course of the day.

In yoga, there are many poses that stretch the adductors—assume Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), Upavista Konasana (Extensive-Legged Seated Ahead Bend), Baddha Konasana (Sure Angle Pose)—however not quite a lot of poses that strengthen your adductors. Squeezing a Yoga Block between your thighs in Bridge Pose is one strategy to shield your knees and SI joint when you’re within the pose. Working towards with a block can even strengthen the adductors, which is able to assist stabilize your knees and SI joints in the long term.

Urgent your thighs right into a Yoga Block in Bridge Pose additionally helps shield your hip joints. After we apply Bridge, it’s frequent to push up with the glutes with a view to get as a lot peak as doable. This could trigger us to push into hip joints, which might trigger the femur heads to push towards the sides of the hip sockets. After we do that repeatedly over time, the joint’s cartilage and labrum can put on down. Within the directions under, I’ll recommend a unique approach of transferring into Bridge Pose that can assist you keep away from doing this. The Yoga Block between the thighs will give further assist to hip joints as properly.

Find out how to Strengthen Your Adductors with a Yoga Block

1. Lie in your again on a Yoga Mat. Have a 4-inch Yoga Block shut by.
2. Bend your knees and place the soles of your toes on the ground. Draw your knees in towards your chest and place the Yoga Block between your thighs, simply above your knees. Place your toes again onto the ground.
3. Draw your arms in near your sides. Bend your elbows in order that your forearms are vertical. Press your elbows into the ground and concurrently arch your again away from the ground. Then prolong your arms alongside your physique.
4. Now press your toes into the ground whereas urgent your thighs into the Yoga Block.
5. Lengthen your knees outward, away out of your pelvis, to provoke the elevate into Bridge Pose. Then proceed that motion as you elevate your again all the way in which into the pose. All through the length of the pose, keep this extension of the thighs. This can assist forestall you from pushing into your hip joints. It additionally helps maintain your legs parallel somewhat than splaying out to the edges.
6. Maintain urgent your legs into the Yoga Block and prolong your knees out away out of your pelvis.
7. Maintain for five to 10 deep breaths.
8. Lengthen your arms out alongside the ground, overhead. Stretch out by way of your arms and lengthen your backbone as you slowly decrease your again down onto the ground.
9. Repeat two or extra instances should you like.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.